"Only ten miles! Jove, I'm glad of that! Mountain air does whet a man's appetite! The High Court is the best hotel, isn't it?"
Ogilvie looked at the other for a moment or two before answering: looked, indeed, until the stranger glanced questioningly up at him, as if wondering at the delay. Then he said:
"My name's Ogilvie, and I'm the doctor around here. I wish you'd let me prescribe a hot meal at my house for you. It's this side of the Summit."
The other man's smile had lost its grimness. "That's mighty good of you," he said. "And you won't have to coat that dose with sugar!"
"I wonder," the doctor went on, "if you'd play host first, and give me a lift? I'm as hungry as you are, and White Rosy here likes to choose her own gait. If you'll take me home, we'll be at my house in one tenth the time, and Rosy can find her way alone. She's done it many a time."
The other man looked at the old mare, and as he answered stroked her nose and gave her shoulder a friendly smack or two.
"Certainly I'll give you a lift," he said. "Good of you to suggest it. This old lady looks as if she knew as much as most of us. I hope you won't hurt her feelings by deserting her!"
Ogilvie had come down to the road, and already deposited his black bags and his old brown cap in the automobile; now he was busy unbuckling Rosy's reins.
"Not a bit of it," he said. "She'll come home all the quicker for not having me on her mind! It's home and oats, Rosy, oats, remember," he said as he got up into the automobile with the reins in his hand.
"My name is Flood—Benson Flood, and I've been down in Virginia buying a little old farm for the shooting they tell me the neighborhood's good for. I never use road maps—like to discover things for myself. That's how I got lost to-day."